This disclosure relates generally to the field of instant messaging.
Instant messaging, or chatting, has gained widespread popularity, and may be a valuable business tool because it allows users to exchange messages almost instantaneously over a network. An instant messaging system, which may be implemented on a computing platform such as a personal computer, a laptop, a personal digital assistant (PDA), and the like, may save instant messages as conversations or chat histories. The saved messages may contain information that a user may wish to reference at a later time.
Searching a repository, or log, of stored instant messaging conversations for specific content may present difficulties. Keyword-based or rich-text searching may be useful if the user recalls a unique keyword that was mentioned in the particular chat transcript. However, such searching is not useful if the user cannot recall the keyword or if the keyword is a common occurrence in the log. Further, if the user is searching for a uniform resource locator (URL, also known as a bookmark or link) or other content type, such as an image, audio file, or other file type, the user may not remember any specific words contained in the name of the content, as the name of the content may not be sufficiently descriptive. If a keyword or rich-text search does not locate desired content, the user may manually browse their instant message log. However, manual browsing may be burdensome if the user does not recall the sender or date of the content, or if the instant message log is large.